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Telecoms eager to use cloud technologies face the decision of going it alone or using a turnkey product from a third-party provider. As the industry matures, cloud providers such as Tier 3, Dell and Rackspace are seeking to steer telecoms toward the latter option with bundled offerings geared for quick deployments.

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YouTube has launched its paid video service, with content being offered at monthly rates ranging from 99 cents to $7.99. Among the 30 programmers behind the first 50 paid channels are National Geographic, Sesame Workshop and Ultimate Fighting Championship.

BT's nearly $4 billion investment in fiber optics has started paying off for the British carrier, which reported today that it has added 424,000 branded subscribers in the past year. BT also gained 40,000 pay-TV subscribers in its fiscal fourth quarter. On Thursday, BT said it would launch new sports channels and provide a tier of three sports services free to those who take broadband service. "BT has effectively declared war in the U.K. triple-play market. ... In our view, this is a game-changer," said analyst Barry Zeitoune.

Lumos Networks will connect Richmond, Va., to the cities of Ashburn and Lynchburg with a network capable of transmitting data at 100 gigabits per second, according to the company. "With the vibrant growth and innovation coming out of Richmond, we view it as a significant emerging technology hub," Lumos CEO Timothy Biltz said in a statement.

As telecoms continue to shift into cloud provisioning, they will be faced with the question of if and how to integrate open-source solutions into their models. Already developers of open-source solutions, such as Cloud.com, are partnering with service providers including Tata Communications and Korea Telecom on infrastructure-as-a-service deployments. Rackspace, meanwhile, recently launched Cloud Builders, a service that aims to help operators deploy cloud solutions based on the OpenStack platform.

The virtualization management software market will grow into a $2.3 billion industry by 2013, IDC says. Companies are transitioning virtualization technology into their production environments as the economy weighs on IT budgets.